scholarly journals From Neo-Kantianism to Durkheimian Sociology

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-153
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Hermann Cohen

The phenomenon of sacrifice was a major problem in nineteenth-century social thought about religion for a variety of reasons. These surfaced in a spectacular way in a German trial in which the most prominent Jewish philosopher of the century, the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen, was asked to be an expert witness. The text he produced on the nature of Judaism was widely circulated and influential. It presents what can be taken as the neo-Kantian approach to understanding ritual. But it also reveals the ways in which neo-Kantianism avoided becoming relativistic social science. In this case, it came to the edge and stopped. Cohen’s account is compared to the similar, but ‘empirical’, account of the same material in Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert, which completed the transition.

Karl Marx on Secular and Social Development: A Study in the Sociology of Nineteenth Century Social Science

1964 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert F. Hoselitz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Social And Economic Development

The purpose of this paper is to present briefly the theories of secular social and economic development which can be found in the work of Karl Marx and to place them within the context of general thought and theorizing on these matters during the nineteenth century. I shall not present in this paper any new interpretations of Marx's theories, but shall merely try to show that Marx's views are related at many points to other theories on social and economic development proposed during his life and that in many ways he must be regarded as a typical thinker of that period of European social thought.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Twain ◽  
Daniel Carter Beard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Mark Twain ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Original Drawings

When A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court was published in 1889, Mark Twain was undergoing a series of personal and professional crises. Thus what began as a literary burlesque of British chivalry and culture grew into a disturbing satire of modern technology and social thought. The story of Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century American who is accidentally returned to sixth-century England, is a powerful analysis of such issues as monarchy versus democracy and free will versus determinism, but it is also one of Twain’s finest comic novels, still fresh and funny after more than 100 years. In his introduction, M. Thomas Inge shows how A Connecticut Yankee develops from comedy to tragedy and so into a novel that remains a major literary and cultural text for new generations of readers. This edition reproduces a number of the original drawings by Dan Beard, of whom Twain said ‘he not only illustrates the text but he illustrates my thoughts’.

scholarly journals Przestrogi dla utopistów. Wizje optimum dóbr w historii idei w książce Andrzeja Waśkiewicza

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-167
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Sokół
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Social Orders

The subject of this essay is Andrzej Waśkiewicz’s book Ludzie – rzeczy – ludzie. O porządkach społecznych, gdzie rzeczy łączą, nie dzielą (People–Things–People: On Social Orders Where Things Connect Rather Than Divide People). The book is the work of a historian of ideas and concerns contemporary searches for alternatives to capitalism: the review presents the book’s overview of visions of society in which the market, property, inequality, or profit do not play significant roles. Such visions reach back to Western utopian social and political thought, from Plato to the nineteenth century. In comparing these ideas with contemporary visions of the world of post-capitalism, the author of the book proposes a general typology of such images. Ultimately, in reference to Simmel, he takes a critical stance toward the proposals, recognizing the exchange of goods to be a fundamental and indispensable element of social life. The author of the review raises two issues that came to mind while reading the book. First, the juxtaposition of texts of a very different nature within the uniform category of “utopia” causes us to question the role and status of reflections regarding the future and of speculative theory in contemporary social thought; second, such a juxtaposition suggests that reflecting on the social “optimal good” requires a much more precise and complex conception of a “thing,” for instance, as is proposed by new materialism or anthropological studies of objects and value as such.

Social Science Expert Witness Testimony in Voting Rights Cases

2017 ◽  
pp. 97-120
Author(s):  
Richard L. Engstrom ◽  
Daniel McCool ◽  
Jorge Chapa ◽  
Gerald R. Webster
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Witness Testimony ◽  
Expert Witness Testimony

American Catholic Social Thought in the Twentieth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 219-239
Author(s):  
Christopher Shannon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
Catholic Worker ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Rapid Ascent ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Academic Social Science

This chapter argues that the best early twentieth-century Catholic social thinkers engaged the broader culture but were never assimilated by it. Their sacramental imaginations and openness to supernatural intervention represented a sign of contradiction against the faith-free academic social science in rapid ascent at the time. This prophetic option was especially appealing to converts, anti-modernists, and ex-radicals, but in the 1930s and 1940s it slowly found favor among a cohort of young ethnic Catholics, particularly those exposed to the Catholic Worker movement. The chapter further argues that sporadic attempts by prophetic Catholics to influence secular culture undermined the movement's spiritual foundation.

Statistics as Social Science

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-40
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Statistical Thinking ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses statistics as social science. The systematic study of social numbers in the spirit of natural philosophy was pioneered during the 1660s, and was known for about a century and a half as political arithmetic. Its purpose, when not confined to the calculation of insurance or annuity rates, was the promotion of sound, well-informed state policy. Political arithmetic was, according to William Petty, the application of Baconian principles to the art of government. Implicit in the use by political arithmeticians of social numbers was the belief that the wealth and strength of the state depended strongly on the number and character of its subjects. Political arithmetic was supplanted by statistics in France and Great Britain around the beginning of the nineteenth century. The shift in terminology was accompanied by a subtle mutation of concepts that can be seen as one of the most important in the history of statistical thinking.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document